Here is something very interesting and cool from the earliest days of the Transformers brand – dare we say, pre-Transformers? That is what we have here for you – a translation of some of the early mini-comics that came with the pre-Transformers Diaclone line, from when it was released in France.
You might remember that the Diaclone line was the Japanese toy line from which Hasbro took many Transformers molds – such as the car robots like Sunstreaker and the original Optimus Prime toy. This line, however, had been sold overseas prior to the launch and rise to mass popularity of Transformers – and one of the overseas releases was by Joustra, who brought Diaclone to some European countries including France, Germany, and the Netherlands.
It’s this French release of Diaclone we are talking about today. Joustra included a series of 10 minicomics with the toys, featuring the various characters, arbitrarily grouped into a heroic faction and an evil one. The heroes were led by Convoy (Optimus Prime) and included the future Autobot cars, and Decepticon cassettes, amongst others. The villains were led by an extremely cool toy that never made it to the Transformers line, Multiforce 14, who also had the likes of the Powerdashers and Minibots under his command.
Full scans of the comics – translated into English – are now available online via Primul Archangel Boxes.While there are some translations online, by the one and only Maz of our TFW boards, these are the first we are aware of to be fully typeset with the English translations shown on-panel.
It is a fascinating little read that gives us a nice insight into some of the earliest fiction featuring the toys – to borrow a phrase from a few years back, it is “Transformers History preserved”!
The post Joustra French Diaclone Mini-Comic Translations appeared first on Transformer World 2005 - TFW2005.COM.